Mechanism of the CO-induced<i>1×2→1×1</i>structural transformation of Pt(110)

Abstract

Direct observation of the removal of the ``missing row'' reconstruction of the clean Pt(110) surface under the influence of CO adsorption by scanning tunneling microscopy revealed that at 300 K this process is initiated by homogeneous nucleation of small characteristic 1\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1 patches. Their further growth is limited by thermal activation; migration of Pt atoms is restricted to a few lattice sites. At higher temperatures, correlated jumps cause the lateral displacement of longer chains, and the enhanced surface mobility leads to the formation of larger, strongly anisotropic 1\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1 islands.